CentOS Rocks Good-Bye RHEL

Home Data Center saga

I upgraded my home “data center” recently with the addition of two used HP DL320s. They both have 4GB of RAM and two 15k 36GB drives in a RAID1 configuration. I build and buy hardware as a hobby to keep me close to the reality of managing corporate software systems and data centers.

From RHEL to CentOS

I decided to run CentOS 5.2 on these new home systems. It is fantastic. You have to love the GPL that makes this possible. Some companies making their first foray into Linux might not feel comfortable using CentOS. Mature companies that have been using some form of RHEL for a few years should feel very comfortable. How many Linux OS support calls do you make in a year anyway? Needless to say, we are migrating AOL from RHEL to CentOS at a significant annual savings.

I would have gone to Debian, as I needed a free alternative to improve my company’s operating margins, but why not use CentOS when it is binary compatible with RHEL and FREE? Easy decision.

Open Source Commoditization of Software

Similar to my decisions to move my previous companies off of BEA WebLogic to Tomcat and Sybase to MySQL. It is almost hard to believe that companies payed for the Netscape Web Server now that Apache is ubiquitous. Distant memories of companies paying for Alta Vista, Verity, or FAST search products now with Lucene and SOLR. Thank you Open Source!

Author: Ted Cahall

Ted Cahall is an executive, engineer, entrepreneur as well as amateur race car driver. He combined his skills as an engineer and passion for racing by developing the marrspoints.com points tracking website for the Washington DC region of the SCCA.
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